


ashes to ashes and slime to slime, amen

by Goldmonger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s13e22 Exodus, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, starring jack and his 3 fathers, when will the writers stop hurting sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 04:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14634225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: Alternative opening to s13e22: Exodus.Lucifer is bad. Everyone knows it.





	ashes to ashes and slime to slime, amen

**Author's Note:**

> Title from John Gardner's 'Grendel'.

The first thing that pops into Jack’s head is that Lucifer looks old.

It’s perhaps an unfair assessment. The vessel, from what he’s heard, has been shackled and hexed and split apart, down to the atom; it’s a marvel that the man is still recognisable as whoever he once was. Lucifer, of course, is of an age with the earth itself. He should have an element of the primordial about him. The eyes, however, he notices as Lucifer draws closer, are different to those of other humans or even angels he’s seen. They are flat as a shark’s, roving over the camp disinterestedly while Sam is pulled into a hug by his mother. When those eyes find him again, narrowing, he shrinks.

“What the hell,” says Dean, watching Sam let Mary flutter her hands at his hair, his bloody neck, watching him like he’ll disappear at any moment.

“Oh yes, you’re welcome,” says Lucifer, shoving his hands in his pockets and shrugging. His voice makes Sam flinch, barely. He turns and stands by Mary, his arm over hers like he’s preparing to dive between them.

“He brought me back,” says Sam, without inflection. Jack tries to catch his eye. He wants to run to him, but Castiel is holding onto his wrist, the other sleeve of his trench coat rustling as he adjusts the angel blade it conceals.

“Why,” Castiel demands. He hasn’t stopped staring at Lucifer since he walked into the camp.

“I’m a good person now,” announces Lucifer, and he grins at Jack, taking a step towards him.

In an instant Castiel is in front of him, pushing him back with his blade glinting in the dull sunlight; Sam has his gun trained on Lucifer and Dean is pulling out a rifle, looking furiously from Lucifer to Gabriel. The youngest archangel’s expression has shuttered, his shoulders rounded where he stands apart from the group.

“Oh please,” crows Lucifer, teeth flashing as he appeals to them all with open arms. “You’re going to try to keep me from my son? My boy? After I brought Sammy back to you?”

“You’re not going near him,” says Castiel, at the same time Jack says “you saved Sam?”

Lucifer zeroes in on his response with unrestrained delight. “Yes, Jack. It’s Jack, right? It’s wonderful to meet you.” He beams, turns to wink at Sam. “I saved Sam all right. Snapped him up from a vampire nest in a manner that was, well, I don’t want to say heroic, but I won’t lie to you either, son.” His crow’s feet are more evident up close, but they look wrong when he smiles. Like someone pulling at the edges of a mask.

“Don’t listen to a word he says,” Castiel snaps. Lucifer holds up his thumb and middle finger, pressed together like he’s about to snap his fingers. Castiel recoils slightly but doesn’t stop screening Jack, his knuckles whitening on the grip of the angel blade.

“I’m stronger than you, Castiel,” says Lucifer. “Stronger than my broken little brother over there. You should move. Now.”

“Get away from them,” comes Sam’s voice, strained but steady. He nods at Dean to makes him release the death-grip on his elbow, patting his hand when he doesn’t. He approaches, speaking directly to Jack.

“Jack? Are you okay?”

_Am I okay_ , Jack wants to yell. _You’re covered in your own blood. You were dead five minutes ago._

“I’m fine,” he murmurs. He wants to go home, childish as it makes him sound in a place where he is the primary protector, the last line of defence. He wants to eat the breakfasts Sam makes and listen to Dean bark at the televised dart championships and lie down on his bed with Pink Floyd blaring in Sam’s old headphones. He wants to never have come here at all.

“Jack, Lucifer is evil. Do not listen to him.”

“Big talk coming from a dead man,” Lucifer drawls. His stolen humanness betrays his rage, his mask-jaw clenched and grinding. Jack thinks his eyes flash red, but it was probably just the light. He turns back to Sam, who is closer, and shaking. Without thinking, Jack sidles up to him.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” he says, and registers the truth of the statement with a rush of relief so powerful his eyes fill up. Sam’s arms surround him then and he feels less like the immortal sentinel of a dying world, more an overgrown child. Sam’s shirt is still slightly damp, and he comes away red.

“Enough of this, please,” interjects Lucifer, irritation slithering into his tone and obscuring the polite veneer of the words. “Show some gratitude, Sammy, and get out of the way before I make you.” He clears his throat. “With, ah, more pleading. Or whatever.”

“I need to talk to you, alone,” Sam tells Jack. “I should have done this months ago, but late’s better than never.”

“Not a chance,” says Lucifer. “Scram.” His corpse-coloured eyes flick to Mary, to Dean. “Perhaps I’ll have a one-on-one of my own, hmm? Since you’re so eager to split up.”

“Stop it,” Jack directs at him, seeing Sam’s face. “Stop – whatever you’re doing.”

“I’m just talking, son!” chortles Lucifer, the sound making everyone in the vicinity bristle. “Just trading some japes with some old friends. It’s an inside joke, I promise, though Sammy here has clearly forgotten it.”

“I haven’t forgotten a damn thing,” Sam retorts immediately, standing a little straighter, his hand hovering by Jack’s back. He looks at him, profound sadness spreading across his face like a curtain of rain from a storm front.

“Jack, I was tortured by Lucifer in hell. For many, many years. I locked myself in there with him because he was trying to destroy the world.”

“Exaggerations,” exclaims Lucifer, his laughter higher, mirthless now.

“He killed me, before God returned me from the Empty,” says Castiel.

“He and his asshole brother tried to steal our bodies for their cosmic war,” Dean adds caustically.

“His favourite prince of hell killed me,” says Mary, “and my parents. He bled into my – into my baby’s mouth and tormented my family so he could make Sam the Devil's vessel for the apocalypse.”

“And he tried to kill me,” says Gabriel, softly. He walks through their surprised stares, with stubble and lank hair and shadows under his eyes, creeping into hollows at his cheeks and lines around his mouth. Angels, Jack’s learning, don’t look like impassive cream-and-gold frescoes. Even the good ones.

“He murdered a lot of gods that day, but I slipped through your bloody fingers, didn’t I brother?” Gabriel smiles, ghostly smugness that quickly disappears.

“He’s a monster,” says Sam simply, taking Jack’s shoulders and looking him directly in the eye. “And I should know, Jack. Because of him, I’ve been hunting his kind my entire life.”

“Are you finished with your little HR complaint?” says Lucifer, snorting, but Jack can practically feel the anxiety and fury rippling from him like toxic radiation, turning his stomach. “All that is out of context.”

“You tortured Sam?” asks Jack. There’s blood on the front of his shirt, still, blood smeared on his throat where he’d crushed himself to Sam like the drowning to a buoy. Sam has all his blood back inside him but he’s still pale, his hands still tremble though he’s squeezed them into fists at his side. Lucifer killed the world, almost, too, Jack remembers them saying so, but Sam’s blood is warm on his skin.

“He put me back in prison,” spits Lucifer, and catches himself. He takes a deep breath, lips curled like torn skin. “He put me in prison, son, back in a cage like a dog. Back where that weasel,” he levels a finger at Gabriel, “and my other brothers stuffed me, at the bequest of my dear old dad. I was mad. I had every right to be.”

“Monsters belong where they can’t hurt anyone,” says Sam in a low voice. “I almost lost everything making sure he couldn’t hurt anyone else.”

“So dramatic,” says Lucifer, tutting. “Jack, ignore this display of antagonism they’ve got going on here. It’s manipulative. I’m your dad, your real dad! I can tell you so much about where you come from, about your powers -,”

“You hurt Sam because he wouldn’t let you have what you wanted,” says Jack. He’s feeling something ugly and barbed uncoil inside him, tearing, ripping, and he’s so scared he might be sick. “My mother. She didn’t love you.” He swallows, but it comes out strangled anyway. “Did she.”

“She – she was beautiful, a great kisser, the best kisser,” he says, his laughter uncomfortable and grating in Jack’s ears.

“You lied to her,” says Sam baldly. “She loved her son more than anything despite what you did. Jack’s hers. You’re irrelevant.”

“Irrelevant,” repeats Lucifer, and there is definitely a flash of scarlet in his eyes when he bears down upon Sam, true glee filling up the crevices left uncovered by his man-caul. “I wasn’t irrelevant when I held your nervous system unspooled like spaghetti in the palm of my hand. You remember that _Sammy_ , remember plucking out the G minor of agony from centuries five through eight? Remember the first time I eviscerated Dean, or the millionth? Remember doing it yourself?”

He’s cackling now, clouds of dust forming at his feet as he glides closer, pressing them into the skeleton of a hatchback while the others are blown twenty feet back with a summoned gust of power; Mary and Castiel crumple, Gabriel begins to crawl away and Dean is already scrambling up, fresh wounds on his face.

“I own you, Sammy boy, don’t you forget that.” Lucifer is close now. Jack can smell his breath, rank with rotting meat.

“I’ll always be a part of you,’ he hisses, “and my son will always have that little bit of me lurking around in that head of his, waiting to come out, a time-bomb while he’s next to you. I allow you to live, you _insect_ , and I can take back the privilege whenever I please.”

His hand comes up and Jack doesn’t think – the instinct is as natural as breathing, as easy as telling someone you love them. He immobilises Lucifer, rendering him powerless in a cloud of amber energy that flows from him in a wave. Sam doesn’t look remotely surprised, his tear tracks reflecting in the lambent gold from Jack’s hands.

“How long can you hold him?” Sam asks breathlessly as Dean skids to a stop beside them, panting.

“As long as I have to,” says Jack, the barbs retreating, leaving scars all over whatever amounts to a ceiling in his heart. Lucifer is close, mid-roar; his skin is splitting but he can’t break out of it. A cage, they'd called Lucifer’s hell; perhaps there was more than one.

“Kill him,” Dean says harshly, but Sam’s hand on his chest shuts him up. Sam is still regarding Lucifer with fascination rather than the fear that came before. “Get me the archangel blade,” he says. “Now.”

Dean obliges him, maybe because he’s afraid and maybe because he wouldn’t have denied Sam anything while he looks like this.

“You can’t,” whispers Jack. _He’s my father_ doesn’t sound right. _Killing is wrong_ jars too. _He’s too strong for you_ harmonises with the rest of his pain.

Sam cups the back of Jack’s neck, shakes his head as though to dislodge weariness Jack suspects is years old.

“I have to, Jack. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have you be a part of this but you’re the only one strong enough. Let him go now. I can take it from here.”

“The hell you can,” snarls Dean, but Jack doesn’t wait to hear the ensuing argument. He lets himself look at Lucifer, absorbs the dead man’s flesh and pinpricks of red like dying stars in empty space. Lucifer is too old. He’s lived for so long, and all he has to show for it is a half-formed freak and a legion of damaged people. The decision isn’t difficult, but Jack knows even that is carving something irreplaceable out of him. The little sorrow he has is complex, hardwired into his ugly DNA.

“Do you have the blade ready?” asks Jack. “I can give you an opening.”

“Jack -,”

“Get ready,” says Jack, waiting until Sam is primed with the archangel blade, Dean shoved behind them with protests. He leeches power from the cloud immobilising Lucifer, his arms aching and a dull throbbing starting up behind his eyes from holding him for so long. Lucifer is screaming, thrashing violently as he scrabbles against Jack’s energy to get at them.

“I’m – your – father,” he shrieks, human-mask slipping, slipping.

“I don’t care,” says Jack quietly, as Sam strides forward, yanking Lucifer’s head back by the hair and slitting his throat so deep that the head hangs back between his shoulder blades, vertebrae winking between viscera and spurting arteries. The white-hot glow fades from his eyes and gaping mouth slowly, and what’s left is burned, ragged. It slumps to the ground as Jack drops his hands, and Gabriel starts to giggle, choking when it escalates from gentle to the howls of a madman. Sam falls to his knees, but doesn’t let go of the archangel blade.

“We have to go,” someone’s saying. Dean has crouched down to bring Sam back from wherever Lucifer used to take him, grasping the lapels of his jacket and muttering something urgent, intent. Jack feels like he’s intruding, and casts around for Mary, relieved when she appears by his side, rubbing his back and letting her attention slide past Lucifer’s soiled wings and stolen body to her sons, who are holding onto each other as though stuck that way, Sam’s head bowed in Dean’s shoulder.

“The rift,” Castiel is saying. “Dean.”

“I know.” He says something in Sam’s ear and Sam nods, wiping something from his face and standing with his brother’s assistance.

Sam hands Dean the blood-slicked archangel blade before clasping Jack’s arm, gaunt as someone many times his age, or a body in war.

“Thank you, Jack,” he says. “I didn’t want you to have to do that.”

“I’m glad I did,” he replies, and is happy to mean it. There is that lacking spot in him now, but he doesn’t think he minds all that much. The part with Sam, Mary, Castiel, Dean, his mother and her unconditional love – it’s overflowing.

“Let’s get these people out of here,” says Sam, a smile flickering to life on his face. “We have a lot more work to do.”

“Ain’t that always the truth,” grunts Dean, clapping Jack on the shoulder as he brushes past, hefting a bag full of weapons and looking haunted. Mary takes Sam’s hand, holds it between her own, and they have a wordless but tearful exchange. It culminates in them herding Jack away from the remains and towards Dean and Castiel, who have dragged Gabriel over to help them retrieve people from where they’d scarpered once the fight had broken out. They seem to be orchestrating a kind of exodus from here to their own world with the entire camp in tow, and with the rift closing, it’s obvious time is of the essence.

“We’re going home,” Mary tells him, hopeful.

“Finally,” says Sam, who is walking with a more relaxed gait, blinking slowly like one just waking from a long and restless sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

***

**Author's Note:**

> It bothered me that nobody thought of just outright telling Jack what Lucifer had done. The show is bending over backwards to make me care about or feel sorry for Lucifer, prime antagonist of these characters for thirteen years, and I am not having it, not today SIR  
> Add to this the new Sam hate I'm seeing, based on his decision to leave Lucifer behind in the apocalypse world, and it's even worse. Let Sam have closure and wrap up this awful arc so the weird family with one son and 3 dads and a cool aunt and a weird uncle can be happy-ish


End file.
